The Gospel Coalition

Talk to 20somethings who have grown up in church and you’ll quickly discover some disillusionment with the institutional church and some holy discontent regarding evangelical apathy towards the pressing social issues of our day. The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical is a memoir from one of these 20somethings – Shane Claiborne.

The Irresistible Revolution tells the story of Shane’s journeys to Calcutta (to work with Mother Teresa), Iraq (to protest the war and promote peace), and the founding of The Simple Way – a place where the rich and poor meet in fellowship and unity. Shane is a passionate guy. He loves the Church, as evidenced throughout the book. He is also fed up with the passive, establishment-supporting churches that dot the American landscape. Shane’s story sounds like it could have been written in the 1960′s. Substitute Vietnam for Iraq and give him a hippie hairstyle and you’d get the picture.

But Shane shouldn’t be quickly dismissed as a leftover hippie. This is a man on a mission, who genuinely loves the poor, who understands his own sinfulness and weaknesses, and who believes that the gospel should transform life here and now. Much of this book serves as a reminder to comfortable American Christians that the way of the cross involves suffering, sacrifice, and service to the “least of these.”

The most positive aspect of this book is Shane’s insistence that the rich and poor actually spend time together. He criticizes both the right and left sides of the political aisle for throwing money at poverty without ever meeting the poor. I wholeheartedly agree.

In some ways, I can relate to Shane’s restlessness. I moved to Romania when I was 19 and lived in a village home with no indoor plumbing – all this for the gospel and a sense of calling that would not let me go. I’ve seen American affluence against the backdrop of Romanian poverty. I’ve laughed with the poor, loved and served the forgotten Gypsies, and preached the gospel to the well-to-do. I don’t say this in order to toot my own horn, but to show that my critique of this book does not come from someone unconcerned with social issues.

Still, I have to part ways with Shane in several areas. His book leaves some gaping holes. First, Shane does not go to the poor in order to show them Jesus, but to find Jesus himself. There’s a lot of talk in this book of “seeing God in each other,” which has theological basis in the teaching of God’s image in man. But the distinctions between Christian and non-Christian are virtually eliminated. There are the “poor” and “those who love the poor” over against the “rich” and ”those who ignore the poor.” For Shane, salvation is found through the experience of community. Personal conversion is absent from the book.

Shane’s politics also cause some problems for me. The chapters about his Iraq visit are the most exciting in the book, but Shane demonstrates a naivety about the current world situation that is extremely narrow-minded. At one point, he speaks about coming together in love, no matter if it’s George W. Bush or Saddam Hussein who’s bombing you. The way in which he seemingly puts Saddam’s regime and Bush’s presidency on the same moral level is appalling. Granted, Shane would probably backtrack from this implication, but the bulk of the book weighs as evidence against him. The clear implication of this book is that America is just as evil as Iraq, and that all our problems would be solved if we’d just get together and love each other.

I was in Romania during the Iraq invasion, but contrary to Shane’s experience, I witnessed a strong pro-American sentiment throughout the country. Saddam had been trained as a dictator by Romania’s former dictator, Ceauşescu. Romania is no stranger to oppression, and when the Iraq war began, the Romanians volunteered in droves to go help their neighbors by fighting against the dictator who held them in chains.

But for Shane, there is no nuanced discussion to be found in this book. The idea of loving your neighbors by fighting for their rights is absent. Shane is a decided pacifist, dismissing the idea of “just war” as an oxymoron as illogical as ”friendly fire.” Nowhere does he wrestle with centuries of Christian thought on the subject. Nowhere does he indicate the reality that peace must sometimes be fought for.

Let’s lay aside Shane’s tacit approval of Michael Moore and his more glowing appraisal of Cindy Sheehan. My biggest beef with the book is its theology. Personal conversion is absent. Jesus is our example and our teacher more than our Savior and our Lord. Creeds are downplayed. Deeds are all that really matter. 

Case in point? Shane recalls positively a conversation in which John Dominic Crossan expresses his approval of the Simple Way. Crossan is the radical leftwing scholar of the Jesus Seminar, famous for saying that Jesus’ body was probably buried in a shallow grave and eaten by wild dogs. While Shane quietly admits that Crossan is “controversial,” his conversation with Crossan communicates a message that prevails throughout the book. What you believe doesn’t matter all that much. It’s what you do that counts.

There is much in this book to be commended. Shane is a passionate man who desires to see God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. He is right to decry evangelical apathy. He is right to see the idolatry in much of evangelicalism’s nationalism. He is right to focus his ministry on people, rather than programs. And he is one who practices what he preaches.

Read The Irresistible Revolution. Wrestle with its thoughts. Hear Shane out. You’ll probably disagree with him quite a bit. But Shane’s challenge to free your imagination in order to envision a world where God is the King - that is a challenge worth chewing on.

written by Trevin Wax. © 2007 Kingdom People Blog